This year, Arcata High agriculture teacher Paula Mello took five members of the Arcata FFA welding team to this event. They spent half of the day going to 10 separate booths for 25 minutes each, with each booth covering the different types of welding.
Steel Day is a nationwide event that happens every year to celebrate the American structural steel industry. It gives students, engineers, architects, contractors, and government officials the opportunity to have hands-on experience, career exploration, networking opportunities, and potential scholarships.
Some types of welding include Shielded Metal Arc Welding (SMAW), Flux Core Arc Welding (FCAW), and pipeline welding. Each booth was run by a different contractor.
Steel Day was hosted in Oroville, a 26-minute drive from Chico, but a 5-6 hour drive for the Arcata FFA welding crew. The crew left at 2:15 p.m. on a Thursday and didn’t get back to Humboldt till 6:00 p.m. on Friday. They had to be up by 7:30 a.m., out by 8:00 a.m., and at MetalWorks at 8:30 a.m.
The crew got to experience welding a toolbox, pipeline welding, SMAW, and FCAW. Arcata High Student Braylan Downing said, “Now that I’ve been to something like that, I would encourage more people to go to it and get out and be active in FFA.” Downing strongly agrees that anyone interested in welding as a future career or just to learn the skill should take up opportunities like this.
There are different events and competitions in places like College of the Redwoods, Shasta, and Butte. Arcata High student Aiden Matlock would recommend taking up opportunities like this to anyone who’s interested in a future career in welding. “Yeah, 100%. It’s a good footstep. I got a little footstep with Wyotech, Butte, CR, and Shasta.”
Another Arcata High student, Brendon Mosher, recommends people take up these opportunities, “I think it was definitely a good introduction to [welding]. Like if you don’t really know how to weld, the instructors teach you.” All the helpers at this event were super helpful and all kind, answering any questions kids had about welding and saying how they started out. Brenden believes that ”When you grow up and go into the real world, I don’t think you’ll have those opportunities as much to go to a free thing and go weld with their equipment.”
